Meaning of "ordinary work" in deciding ill-health early retirement 2

Reference: N00227

To qualify under the rules for ill-health early retirement, the member needed to show that his ill-health incapacitated him permanently from doing his “ordinary work”. The Ombudsman did not accept the trustee’s argument that ordinary work meant work of a similar grade, status and salary including, for example, supervisory or clerical work. He said that the member’s job as a process operator (which involved lifting weights) is significantly different to a supervisory or clerical job.

This case shows that the ombudsman interprets “ordinary” work narrowly to mean the same kind of work on a physical basis. Another aspect of the case was the member’s obesity. The Ombudsman had this to say about this aspect:

“The Trustees assert that the nature of Mr Curzon's obesity is integral to the issue of permanence because a "lifestyle" problem can change in the way that a congenital disorder might not…

31 In Mr Curzon's case, therefore, the Trustees should have asked themselves whether his condition in 2000 was such that he was unlikely to be able to return to his former job ordinary work either permanently or for an indefinite period. In December 1999 Mr May did not believe that Mr Curzon would be able to work in any capacity of a physical nature as he did before. Dr Page was of the opinion that Mr Curzon was unfit for the foreseeable future to undertake his ordinary work. She went on to say that, if he were to lose weight to a level where surgical intervention were possible, it was more likely than not that, in view of his long term disability, the prognosis would not be good. However, Dr Page then asked the Trustees if they were happy to award a benefit 3 pension to an individual who had a health problem which in the absence of obesity (a lifestyle one) could be treated.

32 I am not persuaded that this is a question the Trustees should have been asking themselves. Dr Page had conceded that, even if Mr Curzon were to receive surgery, his prognosis was not good. Even if the Trustees had been convinced that surgery would enable Mr Curzon to resume his ordinary work, they still needed to ask themselves how feasible it was for Mr Curzon to achieve the kind of weight loss that would enable surgery to go ahead. There is no evidence that they did so. What they could not do was set aside the question of Mr Curzon's obesity in the way Dr Page suggested. Mr Curzon's weight is part and parcel of his "condition" and should be treated as such. The Trustees insist that they only took Mr Curzon's obesity into account insofar as it impacted on the permanence of his condition and yet, as I have said, there is no evidence that they explored the feasibility of his losing weight. This leaves me with considerable misgivings about the Trustees' attitude to Mr Curzon's obesity.Dr Page's description of Mr Curzon's obesity as a "lifestyle one" implies that this is a self inflicted condition which the Trustees might set aside. There is nothing within Rule 18 which says that, if the member is suffering from a condition which his lifestyle may have contributed to, he is not eligible for an incapacity pension.”

The case was unsuccessfully appealed by the trustees to the High Court (in Saffil Pension Scheme v Curzon [2005] EWHC 293 (Ch)).